A Reuters investigation found that WHO's regional office has turned to the very companies whose sugary drinks and salty foods are linked to many of the maladies it's trying to prevent. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

Geneva, Switzerland (Reuters) - As the world's foremost health agency, the World Health Organization bills itself as an impartial advocate working on behalf of 194 member nations.

Its mission as the public health arm of the United Nations ranges from stanching communicable diseases such as malaria and AIDS to battling what the U.N. considers the latest "global epidemic": chronic ailments such as diabetes and heart disease caused primarily by unhealthy diets.

But to fight those diseases in Mexico, the nation with the world's highest rate of obese and overweight adults, a Reuters investigation found that WHO's regional office has turned to the very companies whose sugary drinks and salty foods are linked to many of the maladies it's trying to prevent.

The office, the Pan American Health Organization, not only is relying on the food and beverage industry for advice on how to fight obesity. For the first time in its 110-year history, it has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in money from the industry.

Accepting industry funding goes against WHO's worldwide policies. Its Geneva headquarters and five other regional offices have been prohibited from accepting money from the food and soda industries, among others. "If such conflicts of interest were perceived to exist, or actually existed, this would jeopardize WHO's ability to set globally recognized and respected standards and guidelines," said spokesman Gregory HÃ¤rtl.

But the Pan American office - known as PAHO, based in Washington and founded 46 years before it was affiliated with WHO in 1948 - had different standards allowing the business donations.

Even so, not until this February did PAHO begin taking industry money, Reuters found: $50,000 from Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage company; $150,000 from Nestle, the world's largest food company; and $150,000 from Unilever, a British-Dutch food conglomerate whose brands include Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Popsicles.

The recent infusion of corporate cash is the most pointed example to date of how WHO is approaching its battle against chronic disease. Increasingly, it is relying on what it calls "partnerships" with industry, opting to enter into alliances with food and beverage companies rather than maintain strict neutrality. The strategy differs dramatically from WHO's approach to interacting with the tobacco industry - companies with which it is unwilling to partner.

The decision appears to stem in part from necessity.

Despite being tasked a year ago by the U.N. to direct the attack on what both groups now call a "global epidemic," WHO has cut its own funding for chronic disease programs by 20 percent since 2010 - an even bigger decline than for the agency as a whole. These diseases cause 63 percent of premature deaths worldwide, but the WHO department that leads the effort to fight them receives 6 percent of the agency's budget.

The industry's cash donations, which have not been previously reported, were described by Irene Klinger, a senior adviser for partnerships in PAHO, as "a new way of doing business." She compared the closer cooperation with that of a couple who needs to discuss marital problems. She said PAHO spends about $30 million a year to fight chronic diseases. But amid WHO's budget cuts, Klinger said, the organization needed industry "money to make this happen."

Mexicans drink far more Coke than citizens of any other nation. But even as Coca-Cola denies that soda causes obesity, it says it is committed to solving the health crisis. The Atlanta-based company has placed a top official on the steering board for WHO's Pan American Forum for Action on Non-Communicable Diseases, a group that helps determine how WHO fights obesity in Mexico.

Klinger and other WHO officials who work with industry say they are careful to maintain control of policymaking. But on its website, the Pan American Forum touts the benefits of membership as helping businesses "avoid regulation" and "influence regulatory environments."

"WHO is getting hijacked," said Boyd Swinburn, an Australian professor and longtime member of WHO's nutrition advisory committees. "They're cash-strapped, and they're bringing the private sector in. That's very dangerous."

Coke sees the situation differently.

"It's about the convergence of the interests," said Jorge Casimiro, Coca-Cola's director of international government relations and public affairs. "What we're trying to say is we're ready to take action. We're companies who want to do this. We're ready to go."

TIES TO INDUSTRY

As part of its investigation into the influence of Big Food on WHO, Reuters reviewed thousands of pages of records, and interviewed more than a hundred experts and officials from industry, academia, health groups, trade groups, medical journals and national governments. Among those interviewed: more than 20 former and current WHO officials and leading advisers to the agency.